by
Ninja (the resident black squirrel)
She doesn’t love me. She tolerates me. I’ve
accepted this, because really, it’s mutual. She’s not my owner—let’s get that
straight right now. Nobody OWNS me. I am my own squirrel, and I do as I please.
However…my six-by-four-by-two-foot home (A cage, she calls it! Of all the
nerve!) does take up a bit of valuable real estate in her kitchen, so I will
concede that she is my hostess. I've learned quite a bit about how she ticks during
the last two years as I’ve raced up and down these wire walls, futilely trying
to get her attention and make her realize how many calories it takes to fuel
all this nervous energy.
I know I'm not high on her list of priorities, and
I just don’t get it. How can a person have something as amazing as a black
squirrel right in her kitchen, and not adore it? For her, it’s all about the
kids and her man. Everything she does is because they are her world and she's
crazy about them. Take me living in her kitchen, for example. She isn't really
into animals, especially in the house, and what's more, she got the idea
somehow that I'm a trouble-making rodent who destroys things if given half a
chance.
So how did I score a comfy little condo in her kitchen and a pretty
sweet life, you ask? It's simple--I made her girl happy. Her man found me lying
in the middle of the street when I was a baby, eyes not even open yet, and he
brought me home to their daughter. The girl was sad all the time because her
cousin had just died. My hostess was terribly worried about her. But then I
arrived, and the sad girl fed me every two hours with an eyedropper, even
during the night. She held me and fed me, cuddled, petted, and kissed me, and
after awhile she began to smile again sometimes.
Furthermore, I will say this for my hostess. She
may not be my biggest fan, but she makes sure the kids keep my house clean and
my water bottle filled. She keeps her mouth shut (for the most part) when the
boy lets me out to play, even though she is nervous the whole time that I will
ruin something. I have to give her a little grudging respect for that. She
won't let strangers or the noisy little girl from next door bang on my walls or
tease me, either.
In the mornings, she wakes me up when she comes in
the kitchen to make coffee. I come out of my nesting box and scold her, but I
have to admit she doesn’t look any happier than I am about being awake. She’s
not a morning person, either. Any sympathy I feel disappears, though, when she
doesn’t bother to offer me any coffee, and makes me wait until the boy shows up
to get a bite to eat.
I don’t see her during school hours. If I were there, in
the school room, I might like her more, because that’s the part of the day she
likes best, and from what I can hear, she’s way happier there than in the
kitchen. She can be crabby in the kitchen sometimes, let me tell you. She
doesn’t really like to cook or do the canning during harvest, but she has a lot
of both to do. She cheers up when she turns her music up loud (thank goodness
for a nesting box to escape to!) and just knocks it out, though. I have to
admit, judging from the tantalizing aromas and the few occasional tidbits of
real food that folks are thoughtful enough to offer me, she does a bang-up job of
it even if it isn’t exactly her favorite thing to do. I watched her spend hours
making a Bacon Toffee Cheesecake for her man once. The boy sneaked a tiny piece
of the candied bacon to me when she wasn’t looking. Ooh la la!
Overall, I can't complain too much. She may love
her girls and boys and that crazy man of hers more than me, but she's not half
bad. A squirrel could do worse. Plus, I can always take a nip out of her finger
or something if she needs to be taken down a peg or two.
